I've hated having to tell teams this joke... the lore of the Scrum pig and chicken is so pervasive that before long someone is going to call someone else a chicken (or a pig)... and then you have to tell the joke to help that person retain face... it can be quite uncomfortable for me.

I think my disdain for this joke has to do with two of American's least favorite farm animals being featured. We call people chickens to say they have little courage. We call people a pig to insult their appearance (clothing choices, weight, manners). Had the joke featured a cat and dog... it would be so different - wouldn't it?

Now Jake it appears has taken this joke metaphor to a new level... good job Jake!

-OR- What happens when the customer has better data about the service than the provider and has better networking, better press coverage, better clout, better market reach and reputations?

(Feb 23) My good looking wife just spent 2 hours trying to straighten out Frontier's billing machine... it's not easy. The amazing thing I observed for my recliner while sipping an adult beverage was her influencing techniques. Now another amazingly disconsernation (not a word) is that Frontier has some awesome support people. But oh-my-god do they have a tough job. It's the system that has failed. And they have to figure out how to make some legacy piece-of-crap work.
But it's not going to lead to happy satisfied customers (testify).

Her father, Jim, moved into the home with us in December, he loves Western movies, and is an encyclopedia of knowledge better than IMDB. So we called up Frontier (our FiOS provider for 6 years) and added cable and a vo…

Dialogue on Distributed Agile Teams
Pondering communication styles, our human ability to truely understand one another, and the tools we use that constrain these attempts.
Peter Senge evolved the concept of dialogue for learning organizations. Extending quantum physicist, David Bohm's ideas on three basic conditions necessary for dialogue:
1) All participants must "suspend" their assumptions, literally to hold them "as if suspended before us";
2) All participants must regard one another as colleagues;
3) There must be a 'facilitator' who 'holds the context' of dialogue.

DAVIDAKOONTZ
· 11 MONTHS AGO
Dialogue, as it turns out, is a very old idea revered by the ancient Greeks and practiced by many "primitive" societies such as the American Indians. Yet, it is all but lost to the modern world. All of us have had some taste of dialogue--in special c…

Popular Topics

Assuming you are on a Scrum/Agile software development team, then one of the first 'working agreements' you have created with your team is a 'Definition of Done' - right?

Oh - you don't have a definition of what aspects a user story that is done will exhibit. Well then, you need to create a list of attributes of a done story. One way to do this would be to Google 'definition of done' ... here let me do that for you: http://tinyurl.com/3br9o6n. Then you could just use someone else's definition - there DONE!

But that would be cheating -- right? It is not the artifact - the list of done criteria, that is important for your team - it is the act of doing it for themselves, it is that shared understanding of having a debate over some of the gray areas that create a true working agreement. If some of the team believes that a story being done means that there can be no bugs found in the code - but some believe that there can be some minor issues - well, then yo…

I’ve noticed a new trend—people have been gaining titles. When I was younger, only doctors had initials (like MD) after their names. I always figured that was because society held doctors, and sometime priests (OFM) in such high regard that we wanted to point out their higher learning. I hope it was to encourage others to apply themselves in school and become doctors also. Could it have been boastful?

The Wikipedia describes these “post-nominal initials”:Post-nominal letters, also called post-nominal initials, are letters placed after the name of a person to indicate that the individual holds a position, educational degree, accreditation, office, or honor. An individual may use several different sets of post-nominal letters. The order in which these are listed after a name is based on the order of precedence and category of the order.
That’s good enough for me.
So I ask you: is the use of CSM or CSP an appropriate use of post-nominal initials?
If your not an agilista, you may wonder …

Amazon book order
What I notice first and really like is the subtle implication in the shadow of the "i" in Drive is a person taking one step in a running motion. This brings to mind the old saying - "there is no I in TEAM". There is however a ME in TEAM, and there is an I in DRIVE. And when one talks about motivating a team or an individual - it all starts with - what's in it for me.

Introduction

Pink starts with an early experiment with monkeys on problem solving. Seems the monkeys were much better problem solver's than the scientist thought they should be. This 1949 experiment is explained as the early understanding of motivation. At the time there were two main drivers of motivation: biological & external influences. Harry F. Harlow defines the third drive in a novel theory: "The performance of the task provided intrinsic reward" (p 3). This is Dan Pink's M…

Have you ever been in a situation where you thought the technique needed to move forward was one thing, yet the person leading (your leader) assumed something else was what was needed? Did you feel misaligned, unheard, marginalized? Would you believe that 54% of all leaders only use ONE style of leadership - regardless of the situation? Does that one style of leading work well for the many levels of development we see on a team?

Perhaps your team should investigate one of the most widely used leadership models in the world ("used to train over 5 million managers in the world’s most respected organizations"). And it's not just for the leaders. The training is most effective when everyone receives the training and uses the model. The use of a ubiquitous language on your team is a collaboration accelerator. When everyone is using the same mental model, speaking the same vernacular hours of frustration and discussion may be curtailed, and alignment achieved, outcomes …